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Thames & Hudson publish The Book of Kells by Bernard Meehan

Produced around 800, it presents a text of the Gospels employing decoration that is not only extraordinarily rich and colourful but also, in places, deeply enigmatic.


The Book of Kells

This new book will enrich people interested in manuscripts, in design, in Celtic art, in religious imagery, and in the world of Irish studies. It will be a revelation even to those familiar with the great Book of Kells. We are guided through full-page depictions of Christ, the Evangelists and their symbols, lavish openings to the Gospels, inventive lettering, and combinations of complex interlace, animals and human figures.

The book elucidates the imagery, with descriptions of how animals, including lion, peacock and snake, functioned symbolically, and explores the relationship between text and decoration, the scribes and artists, and technical aspects including the production of the manuscript, which remains mysterious.

The exceptional illustrations feature more than eighty actual-size reproductions of full pages, and enlarged details that allow the reader’s eye to dwell on the intricacy of decoration that is barely visible in the manuscript itself.

Bernard Meehan is Head of Research Collections and Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College Library, Dublin, owners of the Book of Kells. His curatorial responsibilities include the college’s corpus of medieval manuscripts, collections of Irish historical and literary papers, and the early printed books housed in the iconic three-hundred-year-old Long Room of the Old Library.

ISBN 9780500238943
32.00 x 24.50 cm
Hardback in slipcase
256pp
250 Illustrations, 230 in colour
First published 2012

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